Tuesday, 21 August 2007

My First Virtual Console Experience

I know that this is very old news for most Wii owners, but today I had my first experience with Nintendo'sVirtual Console and thought I'd share it with you. :-)

As soon as I heard that Super Metroid was going up, I rushed into town to buy my first Wii Points card. I'm sure they were about twenty quid (I might be wrong) but I got one from HMV in Derby for £14.99, which I was quite happy with. It's cheaper than the equivalent on the Xbox 360!

I added the points to my account, no problem. I've bought countless Microsoft points and the experience mirrored that almost exactly. The Wii shop is okaaay, but far too slow and is a bit simplified for my liking. I hate to suggest that Nintendo targets kids, but it does feel pretty 'interface by numbers' after the slick Xbox 360 dashboard and Marketplace.

But anyway, I couldn't find Super Metroid. It's not out on the UK Virtual Console yet! What!? That's rubbish. It put me in a bad mood, so I bought two Mario games to cheer me up. I spent 1000 points (£7.50) on Paper Mariofrom the N64 and 800 points (£6.00) on Super Mario World from the Super Nintendo. They downloaded in seconds and were added to my main Wii menu screen, as I'm sure you've seen in countless images since the Wii launch.

The games play okay with my Gamecube controller. The button placement is a bit lame for SNES games and it can't be customised which is absolutely ridiculous. It's made me consider buying a Classic Controller which I really didn't want to do...

But at the end of the day, the games are great. After all, they're some of the best games ever made. They're a bit bare bones if you're used to buying Xbox 360 Arcade games (which offer HD resolutions, achievements, Xbox Live content, etc...) but they're classics. And they're just the way Nintendo meant you to experience them first time round, for better or for worse.

I'll buy more Virtual Console games (when Super Metroid finally comes out...) and I'm sure I'll play my newly downloaded games loads. After all, there's been no new decent Wii games for a while, has there? :-p